


Ameyadori

by Rush_That_Speaks



Category: Tactics
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rush_That_Speaks/pseuds/Rush_That_Speaks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ameyadori: sheltering from the rain together beneath a tree or an umbrella</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ameyadori

**Author's Note:**

> Written for qwerty

 

 

It was raining.

It was not a violent rain, but it was cold and breezy. Yoko had lit a brazier in the porch and tucked blankets invitingly around the base of a small table. Although there was a cheery glow highlighting the place where the words trailed off into nothingness on page forty-seven of the manuscript that Yoko had also helpfully stacked and made ready, it was not the sort of day on which Kantaro Ichinomiya felt obliged to do anything more energetic than a little serious procrastinating. He lounged against the wall, feet under the blanket, and wondered if it was worth ordering Yoko to light the braziers in the rest of the house. It probably wasn't. She so enjoyed trying to make him work that it seemed a shame to spoil it, so he blew smoke at the garden and watched the blue plumes fade into the mist that was coming up from the soil. The patter of the rain mingled pleasantly with the small rustling and swearing noises from the next room, where Haruka was trying to coat his feathers with duck oil and having a little difficulty reaching. He claimed that the roof leaked and that no reasonable person could be expected not to have wings out at all indoors, thank you. The mental image of Haruka attempting to reach that precise spot between his shoulder blades where the pinfeathers sprouted, and no doubt dripping oil down his back by mistake, was enough to bring Kantaro something between a laugh and a blush.

He was about to get up and wander over to inquire whether Haruka required any assistance, and was wondering which degree of infuriating friendliness he should use to make the offer, when he noticed that Reiko was splashing up the path through the gathering darkness. Her legs were caked with mud and strands of caught grass. She was soaked, but not taking any notice of it, and he surmised that she must have left in the morning before it started raining, since she was not wearing a rain hat or holding an umbrella. The expression of determination on her face was overly familiar, and he frowned. If it was not the weather for authorial efforts, it was certainly not the weather for editorial visits, and he hadn't got a deadline coming up for several weeks yet.

She paused at the end of the path, not stepping up onto the porch, and stared at him for several minutes in silence. His frown deepened. This was not like Reiko. She was scuffing one of her sandals on the worn stone of the path, nervously, but the mud was persistently clinging.

"Look," she said abruptly, two spots of sharp color coming into her cheeks, "the company has had enough. You're just not selling, Ichinomiya-sensei, and folklore is becoming more unpopular every day. They wanted to send you a letter, but I thought I'd better do it in person. You keep writing about these things, these goblins and youkai, as though they were real, and that's not what today's audience wants to read any more. They aren't real." She took a step towards him, unable to look him in the eye. "We're dropping you. Cancel the deadline." Her eyes flashed upward at him, trying to gauge his reaction, and then settled back on her feet again.

Kantaro was silent for only a second before he smiled broadly. "That's all right, Reiko-san. I quite understand. Would you like to come in out of the rain?"

Reiko looked, if possible, even more embarrassed. "No," she said quietly. "No, I wouldn't."

"Stay there for just a moment, then," he said, standing up and ducking through the doorway out of the porch. He returned with a large, heavy, and extremely ancient umbrella in the crook of his arm. It creaked loudly as he opened it. "Take this, at least, Reiko-san. Just to show that there are no hard feelings." She reached for it hesitantly, and propped the stem on her shoulder, staggering a little under the unexpected weight, before she turned and trudged away down the path, her short skirt flapping dispiritedly and her sandals sloshing. Kantaro's smile didn't fade even a fraction.

Just inside the inner doorway, Yoko put her hands to her mouth, inhaling sharply, and scurried frantically to find Haruka, whom she found staring at the paper wall between himself and Kantaro. She knew as soon as she saw him that he'd heard every word of it. "What are we going to do?" she asked in a furious whisper. "That was the stablest part of our income! We have to make sure this doesn't happen, or we'll never eat again! You know the exorcism jobs aren't precisely steady..."

Haruka flapped his wings absently, droplets of oil spattering all around the room. One of them flew into the candle flame, flaring up and dying down with a hiss. He was still staring intently at the wall. "I know," he said slowly. He sat in silence for a couple of minutes. "Yoko?" he said, looking up. "Weren't you always saying we should put me to work?"

 

The young lady was pathetically grateful, pathetically delicate, and, Haruka thought, generally impressively pathetic. But she was paying for dinner, which was the important thing, and she was not terribly obtrusive company, except when she was directing disgusted glares at his rice bowl, which he had, of course, brought with him. For the sum of money she was giving him, she was probably entitled to do that. He smiled at her, as charmingly as he could, carefully not showing his fangs, and she choked, blushed, and left off in the middle of whatever she'd been saying. Good. He decided that he could get used to this. Her house hadn't been terribly unpleasant either.

He finished the last of his food-- what had it been, anyhow? Kitsune-don?-- and stood up, holding out an arm for her to take as she fell into step with him. Yoko had been very explicit about his needing to maintain these courtesies. "An air of being just a little Western really attracts the women," she'd said. "With that suit you wear all the time, you could do exotic stranger very well."

The girl pressed more firmly against his side as the waitress bowed them out of the restaurant, and he sighed. Any minute now, she was going to giggle. There it was. He swung away from her, taking her hands, and began the practiced and thorough ceremony of disengaging; the slight annoyance that had crossed her face when he moved away vanished entirely as he bowed and kissed her fingertips. This was all so predictable.

"Thank you very much," he said formally. "If you ever require any more... assistance... you know where to find me." And he strode away into the yet unceasing rain.

 

"Well, shouldn't I be curious, don't you think?" Kantaro said. "In the past two weeks, I've seen him in restaurants with no fewer than seven separate women, and that's just a little odd for Haruka. Besides, if one of them tries to give him a name, it's going to be extremely annoying to have to deal with."

"I don't think they know he's a goblin," Yoko said. "And he seems to be enjoying himself. Maybe we should just leave it at that for the moment."

Kantaro did not seem to be paying any attention to this.

"In other words," Yoko said helpfully, "we should stop following him around, go home, and get out of the damp."

"Yoko," he said, warningly.

"Or is it just that you're bored, since you've had so little else to do lately?"

A moment later, Yoko found herself reflecting, and not for the first time, on the fact that the spell to quiet a noisy kitsune was one of the most aggravating inventions that humans had yet managed to come up with. It made her a little slow in noticing that Kantaro had ducked out of the mouth of the alleyway they were crouching in, evidently following Haruka and his latest customer. She got a look at the customer and groaned; there was such a thing as insult to injury.

It was Reiko.

"Oh, dear," Kantaro said mildly. Yoko noticed, however, that his hands were clenched at his sides. "Come, Yoko," he said. "I suspect that we are going to be needed."

If she had been able to speak, Yoko would have suggested that their presence might well be the last thing that Haruka and Reiko wanted at this particular moment, but she found herself forced to trail through the streets after her master in silence, and, looking at the set of Kantaro's shoulders, decided that it was probably for the best that she hadn't been able to say anything.

 

Reiko and Haruka paused in front of Reiko's front door to scrape the mud off their shoes, giving Yoko and Kantaro an admirably long chance to duck behind the nearest shrubbery, hissing at the wet. Their hiding place was nearly given away when Yoko gave a loud squeak at the sight of Reiko taking Haruka's hands fervently between her own, but she presently found herself admiring the sheer speed and dexterity with which Kantaro could produce the silencing spell without even looking at it.

Reiko was leaning in towards Haruka, and speaking in a low and impassioned voice. "It's just... I've been so alone, and this last while especially..." She shivered and stepped a little closer to him. The gas lantern at the corner of the street nearby flickered on, showing her biting her lip in the half-light and clutching at him fumblingly. "And I didn't know where to go, or who to turn to, and I've been getting so... desperate... and then I thought, at least I know you, Haruka-san, so I decided I'd come to you. You'll take care of me, won't you? Please?"

"Of course," Haruka declared, sounding ever so slightly strained. He pulled backwards a bare inch, but shifted his hands within hers until they were clasped. "Shall we go inside?"

They did, and Kantaro stepped up onto Reiko's porch, leaning around the doorframe and gesturing to Yoko to stay where she was. He appeared to be regarding the events inside with considerable interest.

"Um..." called Yoko, "I don't think you should...", and then she found herself talking to an empty doorway as Kantaro dove suddenly through it.

 

Inside, Yoko discovered a great deal of confused entanglement. Kantaro had his arms wrapped around Haruka's waist, just below the wings, and appeared to have hit him with a very thorough flying tackle; Haruka's staff was still fizzling and giving off little sparkles of blue lightning, which were burning tiny holes in the floor and casting wild, shifting shadows on the walls. Reiko was backed up against the farthest possible wall, hands to her mouth. Most peculiarly, a shape resembling an extremely angular giant mushroom was hopping up and down in front of Reiko, blinking at her with one giant violet eye and sticking out a very long and black tongue in a set of vaguely obscene gestures. It was giggling hysterically. It turned, somehow, without trying to go closer to her, and hopped in a series of springing leaps past Yoko and out the door. The sound of its giggling faded slowly into the distance as its shape faded into the gloom.

"It's quite all right," Kantaro said reassuringly, unwinding himself from Haruka. "It shouldn't be back. They generally don't stay in a place after they've been revealed in their true forms. Just drop the fee you and Haruka agreed on off at the house later."

Reiko nodded faintly, sinking into a sitting position on the floor. "Ichinomiya-sensei?" she said. "I think I can try to get your contract reinstated. I think there are people who need to know the information you write about."

"Certainly, certainly," said Kantaro expansively. "We'll talk about all that later. For now, why don't you have a rest?" He picked up Haruka's staff and handed it to him, grinning.

 

The walk home was punctuated by several brief shouting matches.

"Look," said Haruka, "how was I supposed to know it was a friend of yours? I know you have a lot of friends among the youkai, but that thing..."

"It's a kurakasa," Kantaro said, in a reasoning tone of voice, "an umbrella spirit. I gave it to Reiko the last time she visited. They're perfectly harmless; all they ever do is giggle at people from the shadows. It must have gotten very unnerving, don't you think? Now, if you'd mentioned to me that you were setting up a more proactive exorcism service, instead of just going out and being terribly mysterious, I might have told you about it. Really, Haruka, you could have hurt that poor creature very badly."

"Why do you care if I'm going out and being terribly mysterious?" Haruka grumbled. "You do it all the time. It's one of your more annoying hobbies."

There was a brief interval of silence. Only their footsteps sounded, slightly out of rhythm with each other, Yoko's lighter and quicker as she wandered out of possible spell range. Just in case, she told herself.

"Oh," said Haruka. "Oh, bother."

He spun Kantaro around very firmly and kissed him, making no effort whatsoever to look in any way charming or to bother hiding his fangs. It was an aggravated and fierce sort of kiss, but it was undoubtedly sincere, and Kantaro's smile afterward held absolutely nothing in the way of underhanded plotting.

Yoko bounced happily, but quietly, and decided that she'd go along home ahead of them.

 

 

 


End file.
